In response to this comic, editors at Wikipedia created a malamanteau page. It was deleted multiple times and eventually turned into a redirect to the Wikipedia page for {{w|xkcd}}. Malamanteau and the controversy at Wikipedia got coverage at ''The Economist'' and ''The Boston Globe''.

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In response to this comic, editors at Wikipedia created a malapropism page. It was deleted multiple times and eventually turned into a redirect to the Wikipedia page for {{w|xkcd}}. Malamanteau and the controversy at Wikipedia got coverage at ''The Economist'' and ''The Boston Globe''.

Revision as of 20:20, 5 November 2013

Title text: The article has twenty-three citations, one of which is an obscure manuscript from the 1490s and the other twenty-two are arguments on LanguageLog.

Explanation

A malapropism is the use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical utterance. An example is Yogi Berra's statement: "Texas has a lot of electrical votes," rather than "electoral votes".
A portmanteau is a word made-up of two or more combined words and their definitions. For example, motel is a portmanteau, from the words motor and hotel.
Here, Randall uses the word "malamanteau" which is both a portmanteau of "malapropism" and "portmanteau" and a malaprop of "portmanteau". The methods used to create this new word are the very words used in the process. This is called a meta or “self-referential” joke.

"Malamanteau" was originally coined in 2007, when it was proposed by user ludwig_van on Metafilter as a term for language errors like "flustrated" (flustered & frustrated) and "misconscrewed" (misconstrued & screwed). Malamanteau did not appear on LanguageLog until after this strip.

Response

In response to this comic, editors at Wikipedia created a malapropism page. It was deleted multiple times and eventually turned into a redirect to the Wikipedia page for xkcd. Malamanteau and the controversy at Wikipedia got coverage at The Economist and The Boston Globe.

Transcript

[The strip is set up as the top of a Wikipedia page.]

((The Wikipedia logo.))

Wikipedia

The free encyclopedia

((Side navigation options.))

Navigation

- Main Page

- Contents

- Featured Content

- Current Events

((Wikipedia header options.))

Article Discussion Edit this page History

((The article itself.))

Malamanteau

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A malamanteau is a neologism for a portmanteau created by incorrectly combining a malapropism with a neologism. It is itself a portmanteau of ((... the article cuts off.))

Discussion

Neologism isn't properly defined in the explanation. A neologism can be any new word; it doesn't have to be made through a combination of other words. Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malamanteau redirects to xkcd's page last I checked. Wiktionary's page on it was deleted almost 3 years ago. Additionally, the description is missing an explanation for the image text (and maybe the word "portmanteau" should get a definition included). 76.106.251.87 22:03, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

<13:25, 20 April 2013‎> Amalthea‎ (-130) (In the absence of new reliable sources that can bring this beyond a dictionary entry, I think the consensus from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Malamanteau still holds.)

<13:07, 20 April 2013‎> IP_87... (+130) (restored the content from the comic)

<22:07, 27 September 2012‎ Scottywong (+18) (redirect to xkcd)

<unknown date> Page Deleted

I have a feeling that the main point of this comic was that the words "portmanteau" and "neologism" (and maybe even "malapropism") appear disproportionately more on Wikipedia than other references. I certainly would agree with that sentiment. --Quicksilver (talk) 02:19, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

The page is still redirecting to the wikipedia page on xkcd, how long do you think it will be before the original content is restored? Whiskey07 (talk) 11:37, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Never. The page has now been fully, indefinitely protected. Good thing too. NealCruco (talk) 21:45, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Quicksilver's comment: not only is the comic poking fun at Wikipedia's propensity for using these words, but Randall's comic has created a page relying on almost no content _except_ these sorts of words. 141.101.81.216 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

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